 "I had made a few
specialty knives for a European movie shooting up in the high country right on the North
American/Canadian border. They had built a whole gold-rush kind of town, and purposely
were shooting it in the winter… since the story had to do with the town's survival
both with the elements and their own inner demons… or at least that's what it said in
the script.
They really were looking for
authentic props and costumes of the period, and I did a lot of research making them just
the right knives. I was up in Colorado Springs at a charity rodeo and realized they were
shooting up north of me. So I thought… what the heck, and with a few friends, decided
to drive on up there. However… I never made it.
We got stuck in a massive snow
storm, and had to huddle in our car for two days waiting out a huge white-out of a snow
storm. Before I left, I had just watched that great Robert Redford movie, "Jeremiah
Johnson" on TV, and thought rather arrogantly: "Oh hell, I'd love to live that
life of a mountain man!" I guess God heard me, and wanted me to see what it was
REALLY like. It got a bit dicey on the third day with supplies down, and we did do our
best to adapt and find ways to make fires and stretch very limited food supplies… and
what with no heater… as good as a Chevy is, it's just a cold inside as it is out!
We obviously did survive, and I
never did get up to the movie shoot, but I did find this piece of Elk on the second day of
the storm, while on a search for wood. It was one of the most perfect pieces of Elk horn
I've ever seen, and I decided to make an authentic skinner knife… my very first.
It came out clean and
functional, just what the mountain man in all of us need in emergencies. Keep it in your
glove compartment. You never know… |
